[Red Badger]

This is a ~500,000-year-old point from Kathu Pan 1. Multiple lines of evidence from a University of Toronto-led study indicate that points from Kathu Pan 1 were used as hafted spear tips. Scale bar = 1 cm. Credit: Jayne Wilkins

These are examples of experimental hafted points from a University of Toronto-led study. Points were hafted to wooden dowels using Acacia resin and sinew and then thrust into a springbok carcass target using a calibrated crossbow. The Kathu Pan 1 archaeological points show a similar pattern of edge damage to these experimental points. Credit: Jayne Wilkins

This is a mounted crossbow used for spearing experiments in a University of Toronto-led study that showed that ~500,000-year-old points from Kathu Pan 1 were used as hafted spear tips. Credit: Benjamin Schoville

[Red Badger]

GGG Ping!.............

[Charles Henrickson]

Archaeologists identify spear tips used in hunting a half-million years ago

Oh, why not make it three million years ago? Or sixteen million? As long as we're making up numbers, why not shoot for the moon? A billion years ago!

All these dating guesses are based on a very shaky presuppositon: i.e., that the method used for dating would hold true all the way back to the beginning, that nothing intervened to skew the data and thus make the methodology suspect, and that there could be no other explanation possible for the data observed.

[Beowulf9]

Not trying to call into question their methods of study, but what? They are using a calibrated crossbow to study how the points break?

I spent many a day as a young girl trying to throw a spear, being a young girl I obviously was flawed but I did learn something from that, besides the fact that I didn’t have the strength to stay alive from spear kills...it’s very hard to throw a spear straight. Even when the shaft is very straight, it’s like golf, every inflection of your muscle movement affects the trajectory and the shaft definitely hasn’t a straight line. In fact some of the weight of the shaft is different at different portions of it, affecting it’s direction.

How can a machine tell them what the results of a man thrown spear would be...and I say man because I already know, a girl couldn’t kill a rabbit with it for a few months, but hey, it’s nice to be thin;)

[dead]

I understand carbon dating and all that, but I never understand this part:

They know how old the rock is, but how do they know when the rock became an arrowhead?

And they know how to date the surrounding soil, but how do they know when something came to reside in that soil? When did humans first invent burying stuff?

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Did they verify these theories with Helen Thomas or Madonna or other people who are 500,000 years old?

[From The Deer Stand]

Save these spear tips. The way the obama economy is going we may need them.

[null and void]

Too clever by halft...

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Hard to find objects this old when the glaciers keep grinding everything up. I hope the results hold up.